The [first/next] off-case position is the india da: First, us-india relations are high and driven by mutual distrust towards China

Democracy Impacts

Democracy — 1NC

US –India ties key to promote global democracy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States this week will continue the growing positive and proactive engagement between these “natural allies,” a label first raised by President Barack Obama in 2009. In the last couple of decades, Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama have all endorsed that sentiment in one form or another, and it has been regularly used by analysts.

Detached from optimistic pronouncements of national leaders, however, is such a description of the U.S.-India relationship sufficiently grounded in reality? And is it an appropriately pragmatic description of the relationship? A cautious answer would be no, but perhaps yes sometime in the future. Meanwhile, it might be more useful functionally for proponents of better relations in both countries to aspire to then-Senator Joe Biden’s desire, expressed in 2006, to see the two nations as the closest on earth working as “natural partners.”

Indeed, the continuing success of India’s efforts to eradicate poverty and sustain high rates of economic growth while strengthening governance within its impressive democratic framework is of great importance for the future of global stability and expanding prosperity. While there are other models of governance vying for influence in the world today, India’s success — in close partnership with the United States — is a strong demonstration that a democracy entrenched in liberal universal values can be a global recipe for developmental success. India and the U.S. as natural partners can make that happen, and that is why the U.S.-India relationship is critically significant for the world at large and for promoting America’s cherished democratic values.

Effective democracy promotion is crucial to global stability — it solves the root cause of war and other existential threats.

A grand strategy that includes promoting the democratic peace has much to recommend it. The historical evidence seems convincing: established democracies rarely, if ever, fight one another. The more states that adopt democracy, the fewer there are that are likely to become enemies of the United States. Additionally, as summarised by Sean M. Lynn Jones, editor of International Security, democracy has a number of other benefits directly helpful for US national security. Democracies are less likely to use violence against their own people and therefore less likely to draw in outside intervention. They rarely sponsor international terrorism. Democracies have better long-run economic prospects, rarely experience famine, and produce fewer refugees than non-democracies, which means they require less international aid, are more likely to trade with and invest in the United States, and are more likely to become centres of innovation and productivity.27

Finally, promoting democracy is well suited to one of the major challenges of the twenty-first century: state failure and its attendant threats. The United States can and should respond to the rising tide of state failure across the world with democratic peace-building interventions. The consequences of state failure and anarchy across much of the world – including the rise of terrorist groups, organised crime, drug cartels, human traffickers, nuclear smugglers, pandemic disease and piracy – collectively erode global stability and liberalism and raise the cost of US leadership. Effective democratic peace-building (meaning peace-building that is well armed, well funded and well planned) is the answer to this challenge. When successful, it holds out the promise not just of treating these various symptoms, but of addressing the disease. The alternative is to play global Whack-a-Mole with the crisis du jour, sniping pirates one day, drone-bombing terrorists or barricading drug cartels into narco-statelets the next. Such policy is reactive, defensive and events-driven, the opposite of what strategy is supposed to be. A grand strategy would complement these immediate, short-term actions to stave off threats with longer-term efforts to address the underlying challenges to stability and democracy.

Democracy — Links

Regional coordination and alliances key to continued democratization in Asia.

UNU 11 — United Nations University, global think tank and postgraduate teaching organization headquartered in Japan, 2011 (“Why “trust is a must” for governance in Asia: UNU Press seminar”, October 11^th, Available online at http://unu.edu/news/news/why-trust-is-a-must-for-governance-in-asia-unu-press-seminar.html, Accessed on 07-05-2016, KG)

Ranging from single-party states to parliamentary democracies, Asia is as politically diverse as it is geographically, culturally and economically varied. Differences in citizens′ levels of trust in their governments, as well as civil society′s role in democratic change and the ability of regional governance mechanisms to address cross-border challenges, add to the diversity of the region. Against the backdrop of the region’s rapid change, what trends and innovations are emerging in governance? Is effective governance at local, regional and global levels essential to human development in Asia? On Tuesday, 4 October 2011, Professor Shabbir Cheema, Director, Asia-Pacific Governance Initiative at the East-West Center, explored these questions during an interactive seminar on “Governance for Human Development”, organized by UNU Press. From government to governance “The concept of governance has undergone significant transformation and moved through distinct phases over the past sixty years,” Prof. Cheema said. Whilst traditional models of government focused on public administration and the maintenance of law and order, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a major shift “from government to governance occured, entailing recognition that governance is co-produced by civil society, state and private sector actors”. “Today’s phase of democratic governance brings two dimensions of managing public affairs together: interactions amongst actors (governance) and universally recognized core values (democracy),” Prof. Cheema explained. Human development – a governance challenge Throughout Asia (as in other regions) studies reveal a correlation between levels of human development (and level of poverty) and the effectiveness of governance. Striking examples include the Republic of Korea, which at 26th place (out of 182 countries) ranks high on the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) and receives a high score, 72.16 (out of 100), on the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators (WGI) scale. In contrast Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh all receive 20 per cent or less on the WGI and a comparatively low rank, 141 or lower, on the HDI. Trusting in governments, believing in governance In the seminar, Prof. Cheema presented key findings from three books published recently by UNU Press, which he co-edited with Dr. Vesselin Popovski, Head of “Peace and Security” at the UNU Institute for Sustainability and Peace (UNU-ISP): Engaging Civil Society: Emerging Trends in Democratic Governance; Building Trust in Government: Innovations in Governance Reform in Asia; and Cross-Border Governance in Asia. Whilst the three works analyse different trends in governance in Asia, they all draw out the links between good governance, trust and civil society. “Democratic governments will not survive long if they do not build and sustain the trust of their citizens, but trust is difficult to build and easy to lose.” Drawing on Building Trust in Government, Prof. Cheema explained that the ability of governments to meet basic needs and promote human rights depends, in part, on citizens’ trust in their government. Public trust in political institutions has declined in both developed and developing countries in recent decades, as constituents around the world become increasingly dissatisfied with government. (A 2005 survey by BBC/Gallup International put dissatisfaction at 65 per cent in Western Europe, 73 per cent in Eastern Europe, 60 per cent in North America, 61 per cent in Africa, 65 per cent in Asia Pacific and 69 per cent in Latin America.) “Democratic governments will not survive long if they do not build and sustain the trust of their citizens, but trust is difficult to build and easy to lose in this age of information and communication”, Prof. Cheema said. Prof. Cheema drew on broad-ranging examples from the region to argue that whilst democratic governance can promote trust in government, it is not sufficient alone to sustain it: Even though Japan has made significant progress over past decades in economic performance and democratic governance, trust in political parties and parliament remains low. In contrast, in China and Viet Nam, where politics and administration are controlled by a one-party state, increased economic opportunities and improved access to services have positively influenced citizens’ trust in government. “The high level of trust in central government in one-party states like China is one of the most politically perplexing phenomena of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,” Prof. Cheema observed. Strengthening civil society and regional cooperation What factors, then, can enhance trust, and promote democratic governance and human development? Civil society, as explored in Engaging Civil Society, can play a role in driving democratic change, enhancing effective governance, and helping to build trust by promoting transparency. Prof. Cheema, however, observed that whilst civil society has expanded both in Asia and globally, “civil society organizations (CSO) accountability and partnerships are continuing challenges”. Regional cooperation to meet the multi-faceted governance and trans-border challenges confronting Asia and further afield is also essential. Cross Border Governance in Asia demonstrates that the growing list of cross-border issues and trends in Asia-Pacific cannot be resolved by isolated policy action. It is essential to forge strategic regional alliances, which support supporting consolidated approaches, dialogue and action.

Democracy — Impacts

The spread of democracy promotes peace and reduces the risk of conflict — strong statistical evidence.

Lynn-Jones 98 — Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Research Associate in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, Editor of International Security, Series Editor of the Belfer Center Studies in International Security, 1998 (“Why the United States Should Spread Democracy,” Harvard University Center for Science and International Affairs Discussion Paper 98-07, March, Available Online at http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/2830/why_the_united_states_should_spread_democracy.html, Accessed 08-11-2013)

In addition to improving the lives of individual citizens in new democracies, the spread of democracy will benefit the international system by reducing the likelihood of war. Democracies do not wage war on other democracies. This absence—or near absence, depending on the definitions of "war" and "democracy" used—has been called "one of the strongest nontrivial and nontautological generalizations that can be made about international relations."51 One scholar argues that "the absence of war between democracies comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations."52 If the number of democracies in the international system continues to grow, the number of potential conflicts that might escalate to war will diminish. Although wars between democracies and nondemocracies would persist in the short run, in the long run an international system composed of democracies would be a peaceful world. At the very least, adding to the number of democracies would gradually enlarge the democratic "zone of peace."

1. The Evidence for the Democratic Peace

Many studies have found that there are virtually no historical cases of democracies going to war with one another. In an important two-part article published in 1983, Michael Doyle compares all international wars between 1816 and 1980 and a list of liberal states.53 Doyle concludes that "constitutionally secure liberal states have yet to engage in war with one another."54 Subsequent statistical studies have found that this absence of war between democracies is statistically significant and is not the result of random chance.55 Other analyses have concluded that the influence of other variables, including geographical proximity and wealth, do not detract from the significance of the finding that democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with one another.56

Democracy promotion results in more democratic nations, creating environmental preservation and economic growth.

Diamond 13 — Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, 2013 (“WHY WAIT FOR DEMOCRACY?”, The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2013, Available online at http://wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/winter-2013-is-democracy-worth-it/why-wait-for-democracy/, Accessed on 07-05-2016, KG)

When Arab societies rose up and toppled four dictators during 2011 — in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya — people around the world joined in the celebration. Yet soon after the autocrats’ fall, a wave of apprehension washed over many in the policy and intellectual elite in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East itself. The warnings and reservations were variations on a theme: Arabs are not ready for democracy. They have no experience with it and don’t know how to make it work. Islam is inclined toward violence, intolerance, and authoritarian values. People will vote radical and Islamist parties into power, and the regimes that ultimately emerge will be theocracies or autocracies, not democracies. The cultural argument has often morphed into a second set of concerns. This is not the right time to be pushing for democracy in the region, the complaint goes. Democratization in the Arab world could endanger the fragile peace between Israel and Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan. Or it could threaten American security partnerships in the war on terror. What restive Arab countries should be focusing on, and what the West should be encouraging, are political stability and economic development. Maybe someday, when they have a much larger middle class, democracy will be a safer, more viable option. These doubts about the suitability of democracy for other peoples are far from new. From the era of Western colonial domination well into what became known as “the Third Wave” of global democratization (which began with the Portuguese Revolution in 1974), writers and policymakers questioned whether democracy could travel beyond the West. They not only questioned whether other cultures (and religions) could sustain democracy, but also whether it was in the West’s interest to have these other countries governed on the basis of elections that might mobilize the passions of the uneducated and poorly informed “masses.” Moreover, there was an empirical basis for this skepticism. Although democracy had emerged during the post–World War II era in a few developing countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, and Botswana, most of the newly decolonized states had fairly quickly settled into authoritarian patterns of governance. During the Cold War, many countries were, in effect, forced to choose between becoming a right-wing, often military autocracy backed by the West or a socialist one-party state, frequently born of violent revolution, backed by the Soviet Union and China. The cultural arguments against the prospects for democracy in developing nations were the most tenacious, and they came both from the West and from political and intellectual leaders in the developing world. Latin America came into focus first because of its many Marxist insurgencies, left-wing populist movements, and military coups in the 1960s and ’70s. During most of the Cold War, many conservative scholars and writers in the United States dismissed the idea of establishing democracy in the region as infeasible (or at least contrary to American interests, since it would mean sacrificing U.S. ties to friendly anticommunist autocrats). Because of their long histories of centralized, absolutist rule deriving from their experience of Spanish or Portuguese imperial rule and the hierarchical and authoritarian traditions of the Catholic Church, the Latin American countries were said to lack the emphasis on individual freedom, the willingness among their citizens to question authority, and the appreciation of pluralism and equality necessary to sustain democracy. Similar arguments were made about Asia and the Middle East. “Asian values” and Islamic culture were seen to value order over freedom, consensus over competition, and the community over the individual. They not only lacked the intrinsic suspicion of authority that buoyed democracy in the West, it was said, but practiced a deference to authority that answered “deep psychological cravings for the security of dependency,” in the words of Lucian Pye, one of the most respected scholars of Asian political cultures. Elie Kedourie, a famous British historian of the Middle East, dismissed “the political traditions of the Arab world — which are the political traditions of Islam,” as completely lacking any understanding of “the organizing ideas of constitutional and representative government.” In his influential 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations, the American political scientist Samuel Huntington warned more generally of “fundamental [civilizational] divides.” He stressed the cultural distinctiveness of the West, “most notably its Christianity, pluralism, individualism, and the rule of law,” adding that “Western civilization,” in its commitment to liberal democratic values, “is valuable not because it is universal but because it is unique.” Though they were not intended for this purpose, such cultural arguments served well the purposes of autocrats looking to justify their rule. If democracy was unsuitable for their countries, why should these leaders be expected to introduce it? If a strong hand were needed to deliver order and development, they would provide it. And in Asia, some of them did. Authoritarian rulers such as Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan (r. 1950–75), Park Chung Hee in South Korea (r. 1961–79), and Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore (r. 1959–90) delivered rapid development. Under Mahathir bin Mohamad, Malaysia followed this path for more than two decades beginning in 1981, as did Indonesia for most of Suharto’s three decades in power after 1967. Lee was the most outspoken in promoting the “Asian values” of order, family, authority, and community over what he saw as the indiscipline and loose morals of the West, asserting both that Asians had different values and that they were not ready for democracy. Lee’s arguments carried great weight globally and within Singapore because he delivered for his people. More broadly, the success of the East Asian “miracle” states led many scholars during the 1960s and ’70s to sing the praises of these regimes’ remarkably quick economic growth. The lack of popular sovereignty and political accountability, the abuses of human rights and the rule of law — these were prices that perhaps had to be paid in order to achieve development. Looking at the chronic political instability and relatively poor economic performance of countries such as the Philippines and Argentina that tried to make democracy work during the 1960s, many commentators concluded that autocracies were the better bet for development, and that political repression was a necessary evil that had to be endured along the way. Often, from the late 1950s through the ’80s, the comparison between China and India was cited. While India was growing at the “Hindu rate of growth,” China was making dramatic progress in improving education and health care. (The fact that China had suffered famines under Mao Zedong, who was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Chinese, while famine never gripped democratic India, was glossed over.) But there were other unfavorable comparisons. After Brazil’s generals seized power in 1964 following a chaotic period of multiparty competition, the country’s unfolding “economic miracle” and the comparison with the turbulent and polarized politics of Chile and Argentina (until their militaries intervened in 1973 and 1976, respectively) also seemed to underscore the authoritarian advantage. Two schools of thought in the social sciences fed into this debate. Those in the modernization school, led by thinkers such as Seymour Martin Lipset, argued theoretically and showed statistically that poor countries were unlikely to sustain democracy; if they would first acquire the facilitating conditions — widespread education, a large middle class, an independent civil society, and liberal democratic values — then democracy would be more viable. The implication — at least as it was drawn out by some politicians and intellectuals in the West and elsewhere, even though it was never Lipset’s argument — was that there was a necessary, if unfortunate, sequence to development: First, countries had to grow rich under authoritarian rule; then they would be able to sustain democracy. The second intellectual tradition was dependency theory, which insisted that Third World countries were poor because the West had trapped them in a structural condition of economic dependence and servitude (a modern form of imperialism). To break out, argued theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank, Walter Rodney, and Immanuel Wallerstein (who spawned a related body of “world systems theory”), peripheral countries needed to concentrate power, assert control over their natural resources, seize and redistribute land, expel multinational corporations or expropriate their holdings, renegotiate unfair terms of trade, and sideline a domestic business class that was doing the bidding of foreign governments and business interests. While (socialist) dictatorship was not necessarily the political prescription of this school, its critical analysis tended to reinforce the narratives and legitimize the claims of Marxist revolutionary movements and one-party dictatorships. When the Third Wave of democracy began in the mid-1970s, democracy seemed to be where the world had been or where the West had settled, but not where the rest of the world was going. In a pair of widely noted works, two of the most eminent political scientists of the time, Robert Dahl and Samuel Huntington, dismissed the prospects for significant democratic expansion. Given chronic poverty, Cold War competition, and “the unreceptivity to democracy of several major cultural traditions,” Huntington speculated in a 1984 Political Science Quarterly article, “the limits of democratic development in the world may well have been reached.” The developments of the last four decades, however, have proved the skeptics wrong. Even as Huntington was writing the words quoted above, a wave of democratic expansion was gathering momentum, which Huntington himself would document and analyze definitively just seven years later in his influential book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. In the decade following his 1984 article, the world witnessed the greatest expansion of democracy in history, as political freedom spread from southern Europe and Latin America to Asia, then central and eastern Europe, then Africa. By the mid-1990s, three of every five states in the world were democracies — a proportion that persists more or less to this day. While it remains true that democracy is more sustainable at higher levels of development, an unprecedented number of poor countries adopted democratic forms of government during the 1980s and ’90s, and many of them have sustained democracy for well over a decade. These include several African countries, such as Ghana, Benin, and Senegal, and one of the poorest Asian countries, Bangladesh. Other very poor countries, such as East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, are now using the political institutions of democracy as they rebuild their economies and states after civil war. Although the world has been in a mild democratic recession since about 2006, with reversals concentrated disproportionately in low-income and lower-middle-income states, a significant number of democracies in these income categories continue to function. The lower- and middle-income democracies that did come through the last two decades intact have shown that authoritarianism confers no intrinsic developmental advantage. For every Singapore-style authoritarian economic “miracle,” there have been many more instances of implosion or stagnation — as in Zaire, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and (until recently) Burma — resulting from predatory authoritarian rule. Numerous studies have shown that democracies do a better job of reducing infant mortality and protecting the environment, and recent evidence from sub-Saharan Africa (see, for example, economist Steven Radelet’s 2010 book Emerging Africa: How Seventeen Countries are Leading the Way) shows that the highest rates of economic growth in Africa since the mid-1990s have generally occurred in the democratic states. Once they achieved democracy, South Korea and Taiwan continued to record brisk economic growth. When the G-20 was formed at the end of the ’90s out of the old G-8 organization of the world’s major economies, eight of the 10 emerging-market countries that joined were democracies, including India, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, and South Korea. Further refuting the skeptics, democracy has taken root or at least been embraced by every major cultural group, not just the societies of the West with their Protestant traditions. Most Catholic countries are now democracies, and very stable ones at that. Democracy has thrived in a Hindu state, Buddhist states, and a Jewish state. And many predominantly Muslim countries, such as Turkey, Bangladesh, Senegal, and Indonesia, have by now had significant and mainly positive experience with democracy. Finally, the claim that democracy was unsuitable for these other cultures — that their peoples did not value democracy as those in the West did — has been invalidated, both by experience and by a profusion of public opinion survey data showing that the desire for democracy is very much a global phenomenon. Although there is wide variation across countries and regions, with low levels of trust in parties and politicians in the wealthier democracies of Asia, Latin America, and postcommunist Europe, people virtually everywhere say they prefer democracy to authoritarianism. What people want is not a retreat to dictatorship but a more accountable and deeper democracy.

Democracy — A2: Dem Peace Theory Wrong

Even if democratic peace theory is flawed, democracy promotion is good — it reduces the risk of global conflict.

Lynn-Jones 98 — Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Research Associate in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, Editor of International Security, Series Editor of the Belfer Center Studies in International Security, 1998 (“Why the United States Should Spread Democracy,” Harvard University Center for Science and International Affairs Discussion Paper 98-07, March, Available Online at http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/2830/why_the_united_states_should_spread_democracy.html, Accessed 08-11-2013)

Although many political scientists accept the proposition that democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with one another, several critics have challenged claims of a democratic peace. By the late 1990s, proponents and critics of the democratic peace were engaged in a vigorous and sometimes heated debate.73 Participants on both sides claimed that their opponents had been blinded by ideology and refused to view the evidence objectively.74 Because of this intense and ongoing controversy, establishing the case for the democratic peace now requires rebutting some of the most prominent criticisms.

Critics have presented several important challenges to the deductive logic and empirical bases of the democratic peace proposition. They have argued that there is not a convincing theoretical explanation of the apparent absence of war between democracies, that democracies actually have fought one another, that the absence of wars between democracies is not statistically significant, and that factors other than shared democratic institutions or values have caused the democratic peace.

The critics of the democratic peace have presented vigorous arguments that have forced the proposition''s proponents to refine and qualify the case for the democratic peace. These criticisms do not, however, refute the principal arguments for the democratic peace. As I argue below, there is still a compelling deductive and empirical case that democracies are extremely unlikely to fight one another. Moreover, the case for spreading democracy does not rest entirely on the democratic-peace proposition. Although those who favor promoting democracy often invoke the democratic peace, the debate over whether the United States should spread democracy is not the same as the debate over the democratic peace. Even if the critics were able to undermine the democratic-peace proposition, their arguments would not negate the case for spreading democracy, because there are other reasons for promoting democracy. More important, the case for promoting democracy as a means of building peace remains sound if the spread of democracy merely reduces the probability of war between democracies, whereas "proving" the democratic peace proposition requires showing that the probability of such wars is at or close to zero.

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